Bee Season: The annual spelling bee brings out protesters as well as nerds

[Tom Zurinskas]

Thanks Matthew for the quote, but what does "deep orthography" mean.  It
basically boils down to inconsistent spelling in terms of letters
representing sounds.  What Paulescu has said is that this brings out
dyslexia and that's why there are twice as many folks labeled dislexic in
English speaking and French speaking lands.  Paulescu says that he believes
inconsistent phonetic spelling "causes" dyslexia.  He is in favor of
simplified English spelling.

I'd like to see truespel applied to mild dislexics to see how well they can
read it.  It could be a test of just how much decoding words into speech is
a problem.

Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL5+
See truespel.com - and the 4  truespel books plus "Occasional Poems" at
authorhouse.com.





>From: Matthew Gordon <gordonmj at MISSOURI.EDU>
>Reply-To: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>Subject: Re: Bee Season: The annual spelling bee brings out protesters as
>            well as nerds
>Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 12:35:17 -0500
>
>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>-----------------------
>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Poster:       Matthew Gordon <gordonmj at MISSOURI.EDU>
>Subject:      Re: Bee Season: The annual spelling bee brings out protesters
>as
>               well as nerds
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Tom:
>As I mentioned the last time you brought up the Paulescu et al. study,
>you're misstating their findings. Dyslexia is a neurological issue not
>something caused by orthography. It is diagnosed more commonly among
>English
>L1 speakers than among Italians, but that doesn't mean it's actually more
>common among English speakers. Again I quote from the study:
>
>"Is dyslexia a disorder with a universal neuro-anatomical basis, or is it a
>different disorder in shallow and deep orthographies? Our results are
>clear-cut. They show that dyslexia has a universal basis in the brain and
>can be characterized by the same neurocognitive deficit. Clearly, the
>manifestation in reading behavior is less severe in a shallow orthography
>[e.g. Italian]. However, our results show that if more sensitive tests were
>available, the neurocognitive deficit would be detected. Although Italian
>dyslexics read more accurately than French or English dyslexics, they
>showed
>the same degree of impairment on reading latencies and reading-related
>phonological tasks relative to their controls. We conclude that a
>phonological processing deficit is a universal problem in dyslexia and
>causes literacy problems in both shallow and deep orthographies. However,
>in
>languages with shallow orthography, such as Italian, the impact is less,
>and
>dyslexia has a more hidden existence. By contrast, deep orthographies like
>that of English and French may aggravate the literacy impairments of
>otherwise mild cases of dyslexia."
>
>Here's the citation for the study:
>Paulescu et al. 2001. Dyslexia: Cultural diversity and biological unity.
>Science, 291: 2165-7.
>
>-Matt Gordon
>
>
>On 5/31/07 5:45 AM, "Tom Zurinskas" <truespel at HOTMAIL.COM> wrote:
>
>
> > Yet, the SSS keeps trying and has come up with various plans - for good
> > reason.  It‚s been shown that English has twice the dyslexics as a
> > phonetically consistently spelled languages such as Italian, Paulescu
>2001.
> > Paulescu thinks that English spelling is the cause.  But is it the cause
>or
> > is it caused by teachers leaving phonetics behind in initial reading
> > instruction favoring „whole language‰ instruction, which forbids
>saying that
> > letters stand for sounds (the alphabetical principle)?  Perhaps more the
> > latter than the former.
> >
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
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